This chapter opens with the account of Susan Smith of South Carolina, and of Andrea Yates of Texas. In both cases, these women took the lives of their children. Smith strapped her two young sons into their car seats and drove her car into a lake. Yates drowned her five children in the family bath tub. Smith in particular paints a gruesome picture in my mind. As I read her story I can’t help but think of my two nieces, ages 4 years and 18 months, in that situation, struggling underwater until their bodies give up. This chapter begs the question: did Smith and Yates freely choose which actions to take? The idea of determinism makes me question everyday happenings and seemingly mundane choices I make. Does every event have a cause? It’s obvious …show more content…
Personally, I don’t agree with this school of thought in every situation. Take, for example, a mentally ill person who commits a crime as a result of that mental illness. His or her crime is no less a crime because of their illness or disability, but they are less culpable in my eyes because they may not have chosen that action or behavior. When you take into consideration determinism and free will, I don’t believe that either one is totally correct. Instead, it’s a mix of both. We make choices, which may or may not be influenced by other …show more content…
I’m a strong believer that young children should be limited from engaging in violent video games. It’s scientifically proven that the portion of the brain that controls judgment is not fully developed until a person’s mid-20’s, leaving young children, and even teenagers, impressionable. Knowing this, why would a parent allow violent video games, such as Call of Duty or Grand Theft Auto, to fall into the hands of their children? They see and take part in virtual murders, crimes, and drug consumption and are easily brainwashed into thinking these behaviors are acceptable. At the very least, they are desensitized to the violent and illegal nature of these video games. Replicating these crimes in the real world is enough to ruin their lives. Unless mentally ill, it is my opinion that the children are in some way culpable. The video game did not explicitly tell them to go out and kill, but it did influence them to. They still made the final choice to do
On June 20, 2001, A woman named Andrea Yates drowned and killed her own five kids in her bathtub. Andrea Yates was married to Russel Yates, and together they had five kids between the ages of six months to seven years old. When the news came out about what happened, the population was horrified and outraged. The Andrea Yates case can be explained but not justified, by looking at what happened, the things that led up to the crime and the convictions.
On June 20th, 2001, Andrea Yates killed her five young children Noah, John, Paul, Luke, and Mary in the bathtub of the family’s home in Houston, Texas. The family was Caucasian, and at the time of the crime, Noah was 7, John was 5, Paul was 3, Luke was 2, Mary was 6 months, and Yates was 36. Yates’s husband Russell “Rusty” Yates was at work at the time of the crime. Yates killed her children as a result of her post-partum psychosis and other mental illnesses that had been developing throughout her life. After she finished the murders, Yates called the police and then called Rusty to tell him to come home.
Parents have a larger responsibility over their own youth than the government having a responsibility over all of our youth. According to James Alan Fox in Mass Shootings in America: Moving Beyond Newtown, parents have the biggest responsibility over their kids playing violent video games. “To the extent that youngsters spend endless hours being entertained by violence says more about the lack of parental supervision and control. It isn 't that the entertainment media are so powerful; it is that our other institutions - family, school, religion, and neighborhood - have grown weaker with respect to socializing children…” Fox is trying to get at one thing here, and this is that we may think these violent video games were made to be addicting
The State of Florida vs. Casey Marie Anthony who did not report her missing daughter Caylee Marie Anthony for 31 days. It was the maternal grandmother Cindy who reported in a 9-11 call and said that she had not seen Caylee for 31 days and that Casey’s car smelled like there had been a dead body inside it. A utility worker found Caylee’s remains in a wooden area. A high profile case captivated the nation. The prosecution and defence lawyers have agreed upon only one thing that is the juries are invariably unpredictable.
Beatty 1 Will Beatty Mrs. Laxton ENG 9 Honors 6 March 2018 Romeo and Juliet: Fate vs. Free Will Fate is already determined, where free will is when you decide your life decisions. In William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet this topic is debated. The play Romeo and Juliet is a compelling story of two kids who let nothing get in the way of their love. The main characters in the play are Romeo and Juliet.
The article “Do Video Games Kill” written by Karen Sternheimer responds to one of the most sought-after question; are video games the cause for “young killers”? (220) Sternheimer believes the influence of video games on today’s youth maybe spiraling out of control. She focuses most of the blame on the media, politicians and the Juvenile Justice System. Sternheimer suggests that there are other factors to blame for violent behavior: poverty, the neighborhood, unemployment, family violence, divorced parents and mental illness (218). While juvenile crimes have declined, and personal backgrounds effect actions, it cannot be proven that video game violence has no to little effect on America’s youth.
C. (2017, March 02). Trial judge offers new theory on death of Casey Anthony's daughter, Caylee Anthony. Retrieved January 24, 2018, from https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trial-judge-offers-new-theory-on-death-of-casey-anthonys-daughter-caylee-anthony/ This resource will give detailed information about what Judge Belvin thought happen to Caylee Anthony. They provide information on his opinion just by the evidence that presented during the time of the trial.
In "Human Freedom and the Self", Roderick Chisholm has taken a libertarian approach on the issue of free will and determinism. Libertarians believe that humans have free will and make a distinction that free will and determinism are incompatible. Chisholm has the same opinion. On the problem of human freedom, Chisholm thinks that “Human beings are responsible agents; but this fact appears to conflict with a deterministic view of human action (the view that every event that is involved in an act is caused by some other event); and it also appears to conflict with an indeterministic view of human action (the view that the act, or some event that is essential to the act, is not caused at all).”(Page 3). He does not agree that determinism or indeterminism
Grand Theft Auto Five is like opening their eyes to a world full of violence and drugs. It is labeled mature but a lot of younger children have played this game, which leads the child to have more aggressive behavior then a child who doesn’t play violent games. Essentially it seemed as though
Causal determinism holds universally and, thus, also applies to human actions and decisions. Causal Determinism is the theory that every event has a cause, including human behavior, which “entails that every bit of human behavior is causally necessitated by events in the
I feel like our actions are pre-determined based off of where we originate and how we are raised. hard determined is belief plus desire, plus the nature to equal action. We can say that we choose to get up and eat breakfast before going to school, but we know we need food, so that we can focus and excel in our morning classes Everything we do has an action that leads us to why we do things the way we do as crash course philosophy #24 “Hard determinism argues that, just because we can’t pinpoint the exact factors that led us to an action, we could, in theory, isolate, them – if we knew enough about all the beliefs and temperaments swirling around in our brains”. People who are deterministic would disagree and those who believe in free will would agree There are two philosophers that can agree with me on hard determinism like Skinner, who focused mainly on the concept that people's behaviors are determined.
The third view Chaffee discusses is indeterminism, which is "The view that some events, including human actions, are determined by previous events in accordance with universal causal laws (4.1)". This view Chaffee discusses would reason that everyone can do otherwise. Therefore, a person who commits murder could make the choice to not commit murder and so that person is completely responsible for his or her actions. Lastly, Chaffee discusses Libertarianism, "The view that humans are able to make authentically free choices that are not determined by previous events in accordance to universal causal laws, that there is a meaningful sense that though we "could have done otherwise" (4.1)". Although indeterminism and libertarianism are closely related, Chaffee does not refer to indeterminism following universal causal
Galen Strawson argues in his work, The Impossibility of Moral Responsibility, the theory that true moral responsibility is impossible. This theory is accurate whether determinism is true or false. Strawson describes this argument as the Basic Argument. He claims "nothing can be causa sui- nothing can be the cause of itself" (212).
After reading the module about the notion of choice I was interested in how we as humans sometimes pick the choice that will bring us more disadvantages. I learned that we are unsure of what drives us to make a certain choice. There’s a possibility that it’s just the way we were built or it could be our conscious telling us what to do. When thinking about choices in general it should be understood that we are the ones who are ultimately deciding our outcome with our choice.
A recent content analysis by the research organization Children Now shows that a majority of video games include violence and about half of the violent incidents would result in serious injuries or death in the "real" world. Claim1 Research involving British primary schoolchildren found that the length of time young people spend playing games, rather than their content, could have an effect on their behavior or school performance. But it concluded that fears that generations of young people are growing up with their development impaired by exposure to violent video games are no more likely to be borne out than previous “moral panics” over television and other media. Playing one-player games is not always negative if you do it moderately.